


Late Night Conversations

by BoatSalad



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 19:48:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17987507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoatSalad/pseuds/BoatSalad
Summary: Ratchet has just gotten Drift back after his exile from the Lost Light. In the middle of the night, when inhibitions are lowered and long buried thoughts dig their way back up to the surface, they're left with nothing to distract themselves from talking about past events.





	Late Night Conversations

**Author's Note:**

> it's babby's first fic so go easy on me lmAO
> 
> we never did get to see Drift's reactions to all the craziness that went down while he was gone so here's my take

Drift has always been a light sleeper, so when a shrill beeping cuts through the air of the tiny one-bed sleeping quarters he was sharing with Ratchet, he was definitely the first to hear it.

It has to be an alarm of some sort, but it’s not any kind Drift recognizes. Actually, wasn’t this how phones from a few millennia ago used to sound…?

As Drift ponders the features of phones long past, Ratchet begins to stir next to him.

“Mmph… Pharma…? ’s that your pager or mine?” he croaks groggily as he pulls a big blocky phone out of his subspace, mashing blindly at its giant buttons until the beeping stops. Drift’s confirmed suspicion about the phone doesn’t even register as he fully processes what Ratchet just said.

He sits up and stares at his barely conscious bedmate, illuminated only by their collective biolights and Drift’s much more alert, confused optics. _Did he just…?_

It stings a little more than he’d like to admit. In fact, he won’t admit it. Instead, he digs up the vague, rusted memory of his singular encounter with Pharma and, in his best, most flamboyant imitation of his voice, answers, “ _No_ , my beloved Ratchet, it would appear that it was _your_ communications device that has gone off this fine night!”

Suddenly a second pair of glowing optics shoot open as their owner hunches over into a wheezing fit of laughter. Drift grins down at him; it’s always worth it when he can get Ratchet to crack up like this.

Still coughing, Ratchet manages to ask, “What the hell was that?”

Drift preens, “Couldn’t you tell? That was my completely accurate Pharma impression!”

“But why are you-” Ratchet’s face goes blank for a moment before slowly morphing into a slight cringe. “Oh god. I called you Pharma, didn’t I…?”

Drift nods, “Mm-hmm.” Ratchet groans and buries his face in his hands. Drift’s grin widens as he wholeheartedly absorbs the display. The sweet taste of Ratchet’s shame is almost enough to make him forget all about that little stinging feeling, but… Only almost. He has to ask.  

“…Do you miss him?”

Ratchet lowers his hands and averts his eyes. No matter what he might tell others, or even himself, the loss of Pharma still does genuinely hurt him on a personal level. Despite the admittedly minimal progress he’s made in properly opening up and confronting his own feelings, he still tells Drift the same thing he told First Aid back during the aftermath of Delphi. “…I miss the fantastic doctor he used to be.”

“Would you ever want him back?”

Ratchet scoffs, “Drift, he was missing his head. I think that ship has sailed.”

Drift shrugs, pulling his knees to his chest. “You never know, Rung got his head blown off and _he_ came back from it. At a miracle facility like Luna 1, would it really be too far-fetched to think he might still be out there?”

Ratchet slowly sits up, facing away from Drift. He wants to snark at Drift, to argue, _“Who would fix him? Pharma was a good doctor, but I just don’t think he’d be able to manage self-surgery without the use of his brain”_  but, despite himself, he allows the smallest glimmer of hope to light his spark. No, allows Drift to put that glimmer there; he’s not taking responsibility for this one. It’ll be all _Drift’s_ fault if he’s wrong and Pharma really is gone for good.

“I guess we _have_ seen stranger things. We _did_ just fight an army of rock people.“

Drift chuckles. "Not only that, but didn’t you say you never found his body?”

“That's… that’s true, yes.”

“Then I don’t think it’s too far-fetched at all.” Drift rests his head on his knees, putting on one of his smiles, the kind that’s supposed to ‘ _cleanse one of their negative energies_ ’ and ‘ _set their spark at ease_ ’. If it were being used on anyone else, they’d probably fall for it. During the short silence that followed, Ratchet could already hear Drift’s question slowly working its way out of his vocalizer once again.

“ _Would_ you want him back?” he asks again, much softer this time.

Ratchet tenses a little. This conversation is getting dangerously close to “too much to deal with right now” for him. He cracks a weak smile, attempting to lighten the mood with a little jab, “It’s starting to sound like _you’re_ the one who wants him back, kid.”

“Ratchet.”

Ratchet finally turns to face him. In the instant before their eyes meet, he briefly considers brushing the question away again with another sarcastic quip, a tactic he’s used many times before to end uncomfortable conversations like this, but once he sees the look on Drift’s face, he realizes he can’t do that, not this time. Not about this.

Not once he realizes what Drift is really asking.

_“Do you wish you had him now instead of me?”_

In light of this realization, Ratchet sighs, carefully thinking of what to say next. He’s only just gotten Drift back, the last thing he wants to do is drive him away again.

“It…would be nice to have the old Pharma back. But even if that were possible, I don’t think we could ever go back to being what we were before. Not after Delphi. Besides, we were growing apart long before then, though that’s more my fault than anything else.” The memory he’d recalled not long before his departure from the Lost Light replays in Ratchet’s head. “When I got stationed on Earth, I just told him where I’d be and left, I never even really said goodbye…”

“Yeah you’re really bad about that.”

Ratchet scoffs and crosses his arms. “Thanks, I can always count on you for moral support.”

The corner of Drift’s mouth turns up in a lopsided grin, “What, you want me to lie?”

“No… No, you’re right.”

Drift gives another tired smile, clearly still stinging, but relieved of the concern that Ratchet is using him as a proxy for his feelings about Pharma, so Ratchet will take it.

Drift lies back down, seemingly content to go back to sleep. Hesitantly, Ratchet dares to snake an arm across his waist, silently asking permission to cuddle, which Drift grants by grabbing his arm and tugging him closer until he’s nestled flush against his back. This whole…whatever it is that they have is still new, still rocky. They’re still learning exactly how the other ticks, despite their vast history. Rodion, the war, Earth, the Lost Light, and now this. The unforeseeable future. Neither knows for sure where they’re going from here, in this dingy little ship with no war, no purpose or higher calling to answer to, but…it _is_ made a little easier with the other by their side.

The two lie in a semi-comfortable silence. Ratchet could easily slip back into recharge like this, but he can practically hear the cogs turning in Drift’s head as he’s clearly over-thinking Ratchet’s answer, the events of the past few days, and what the future may hold for the two of them. Ratchet frowns, neither of them are going to get any rest at this rate.

“Hey,” he mumbles into the back of Drift’s neck. “You know I hauled my ass across the galaxy just so that I could find you, right?”

Drift is silent for a moment, as though he has to wrestle with the thought and what it means for a moment before it can truly sink in. “Yeah. I was shocked to see you out here by yourself…”

Ratchet doesn’t let Drift dwell on the unspoken latter half of that thought:

_“…because I thought Rodimus would send a search team, at least.”_

“Yeah, well…you were missed.”

Ratchet can feel more than hear the tiny laugh this pulls out of Drift. “Not by you or anything.”

“Don’t push it, kid. But, yeah. Not just by me anyway. Rodimus didn’t keep up the facade for very long, you know. The guilt got to him; he came clean, told the crew everything.”

Drift shoots up, “He _did?_ What—” He scrambles to face Ratchet. “What happened? What did the crew do about it? Is Rodimus okay, is the quest still going?”

_Oh boy, you’ve gone and done it now, Ratchet._ So much for sleeping any time soon…

“He’s fine, he and the others are still looking for the Knights.”

“The crew wasn’t too mad at him?”

Ratchet’s expression sours a little. He remembers the fake list Rodimus had and telling him exactly how he knew it was fake. “Obviously not _that_ mad, because Rodimus held a vote and the crew decided to keep him as captain.”

“How… how long ago did he do this?”

Ratchet knows the answer will hurt, but… He has to tell the truth. “…A while ago. A little over half a year.”

There’s no distracting him from it this time. Drift visibly deflates, clearly speechless. Ratchet can’t really think of anything to say; he himself even chewed Rodimus out over his treatment of Drift before he left. He can’t find a way to make this one hit less hard without flat out lying.

After a short but tense silence, Drift finally speaks up, voice quiet and hoarse, “…Couldn’t find the time to look for me in half a year…?”

This is exactly what Ratchet was trying to avoid. Why did he have to bring up Rodimus? He should’ve just let Drift sleep, now he’s more heartbroken than ever. In one last attempt to at the very least slap a proverbial band-aid over this whole mess of a situation and keep it from _completely_ crumbling, Ratchet blurts out, “In his defense, he _has_ had his hands full dealing with Megatron as his new co-captain—”

“HE _WHAT?_ ”

Ratchet startles. Did… did Drift not know? “Y-yeah, Megatron switched sides. He’s calling himself an Autobot now. Optimus put him on the Lost Light so he could be judged by the Knights of Cybertron. Some ancient Luna 2 law.”

Drift clearly did not know, because he’s staring at Ratchet like he’d grown a second head or told him the sun’s gone out. Ratchet mentally kicks himself, _Incredible. I try to cheer the guy up and I end up giving him a meltdown. Great job, Ratchet, you always did have wonderful bedside manner._

Firmly resolving not to speak for the rest of the night, Ratchet pulls out a copy of Megatron’s book, _Towards Peace_ , and shows him the post-war addendum that was recorded during the first half of the trial.

Ratchet nervously glances at Drift as the footage plays, watching his expression and trying to gage how much damage control he’ll have to do once it’s ended. His eyes are wide, brow furrowed in a mixture of… rage? Disbelief? Definitely disbelief at least. There’s just too much he could be feeling at the moment, he can’t pin anything down enough to formulate a proper response to. For all the times Ratchet has been annoyed at Drift’s “unflappable enlightened hippy” act, he almost wishes he would smile and say something about “the ever changing whims of the spark” or something, just for a little normalcy.

Once the video ends, Drift is quiet. Unbearably quiet.

“Drift…?”

Drift stares at the blank screen for a moment longer before shifting his body to fully face Ratchet, pinning him with an intense stare.

“Tell me everything. Right now. Step by step if you have to.”

Ratchet sighs. He knew he was going to have to do this eventually; he just hoped he could get a decent rest first. Looking at Drift, though…he knew he wasn’t going to let this go. He shifts to face Drift as well, collecting his thoughts and searching for a good place to start…


End file.
